Thursday, September 11, 2008

Egypt Rocks & Rules at Paralympics Powerlifting

Medals seems to be like magnets to the Egyptian Powerlifting team in the current paralympics in Beijing. Egypt just collected it´s second gold in the men´s 56 Kg category by Sherif Osman, who broke the world record three times along the way to the Podium, settling for an end result of 202.5 Kg. This was an early birthday gift, Sherif´s 26th birthday is on Monday. You can find more photos on a jubilant gold medalist here.

This was the second gold after Fatma Omar´s gold yesterday,her third consecutive paralympics GOLD, after having won in Sydney in 2000 and in Athens four years later.

I´m not going to say in which category she won, because as a gentlemen i´ve been taught not to ask a women´s weight, but i´m thrilled for her, it´s extra special when a women wins, because it signals that we as a nation should take women sports seriously and it creates role models for girls who sees that it´s possible to sport and win medals.

i´m actually very pleased to hear about another female participant in the powerlifting still waiting for her hour of glory(tomorrow hopefully), Rania Alaa Eldin Morshedi has a five-year old son , but still continues to compete on international level. This is something unusual for women in sports in Egypt, they usualy drop their career as soon as they graduated and got married, in my view they give up their career before having reached their peak, and in fact some times not being able to collect the fruit of their hard labour for years and years.

In total this was the fifth medal in powerlifting, two golds, one silver and two bronze! We also won a bronze medal in the Men's Javelin Throw, you can see who the rest of the medalists are here.

I´m quite sure this means that neitherPresident Mubarak, nor the Muslim Brotherhood will call for an investigation as to the bad results this time around, though one should learn from success, just as much as take leasons from the mistakes.

1000 Mabrouk to all the medalists and the whole Egyptian team at the Paralympics!